Pao Pao Pao!

Getting my qipao/cheongsam was the most difficult wedding-related task I had last week. I thought it'd be relatively simple- go to Temple City, find a place to buy the dress or have it made, done! Unfortunately that wasn't the case.

My mom, grandma and I trekked up to Temple City to a street that supposedly had dozens of shops for Chinese dresses. That assumption was only half correct- there were dozens of shops, but unfortunately half of them were closed, and most of them were the Taiwanese-glamour-shot studios. We found a shop that had some dresses, and my mom had me try some on to get an idea of what I liked.





















This is just a sampling...let's just say that nothing fit perfectly. The first dress was an attempt at something traditional, the second was something more modern (boatneck and mermaid cut? Interesting.) the third was actually pretty good, and the fourth was for my grandma cuz she liked the dragon and phoenix design. The design was okay, but the dress was made of velvet and it was see-through. Not the look I'm going for. The third dress would have to be let out, plus it was $600 to custom-make it or $120 to rent it for the weekend.

$600?!?!? My wedding dress didn't even cost that much. I said no thanks and went to Little Saigon in Westminster to try again.

My mom warned me against Vietnamese cheongsams because the quality isn't as good. I thought she was being racist but later found that she was totally right. Nothing in the stores looked as good as the Chinese ones. However, my sister got a dress made at a place called Francine Bridal, so we went there. The price was right (approx. $70 to have it custom made), but I didn't like their fabric. Thus began our search for "the perfect fabric" through Little Saigon.

Did you know that there are, like, 10 fabric stores near Bolsa and Magnolia? We didn't find the fabric until the 10th store. The first store we found had fabric for $25/yard, which I thought was unreasonable, and the last store had better fabric for $12/yard. My little sister/MOH was a trooper for going to all those stores and not complaining once. We found two patterns we liked but wanted another opinion before buying it.





















I had my mom and grandma go with me the next day to double-check the fabric before I bought it, and then rushed to Francine Bridal to get my order in. This was done the morning I went back to Boston.

The whole process was nice because I got to include my grandma. My grandma said she got married in China when the Communists took over and they weren't allowed to have weddings...just small ceremonies that included the bride, groom, and maybe a professor or something. She's totally new to all this hoopla, so it was fun including her in this part. She had a lot of opinions about what she thought the dress should look like, so I'm glad she got a chance to express it instead of giving me a disapproving look later on. Hopefully she'll have fun at the wedding!

So the verdict: red, strapless, backless! I'll show you pictures of the final product when I go to my fitting in May.